


conscient de soi

by roofstopper



Category: Blur
Genre: Internalised Homophobia, M/M, Not Really Unrequited, Unrequited, just not acknowledged, vent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 14:14:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11876244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roofstopper/pseuds/roofstopper
Summary: I see everything in you, I see my whole life intertwined with yours.I fucking hate it.





	conscient de soi

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language, and I had to transfer this from paper to my computer.
> 
> First work, but it's really just a vent, because I'm a bit sad and confused.
> 
> I’m okay.

     I’m aware, consciously aware of the way your hand twitches every time you talk about home, like you’re straining to gesture to me and make your hands communicate far more than your mouth can. But your hands stay down, so I avert my eyes too. You’re staring, oxymoronically warm blues burning and shining, pouring out your conviction, but I’m stuck. I’m anchored, heart pounding as I try to think of anywhere else I’d rather be.

 

     But, God, if you don’t permeate those thoughts. My mind’s eye is… infested with you. You bleed out of the sand and lounge in every vacation daydream I try. If I think of home, it’s us under the covers. (Innocently, I’m too ashamed to go any further… even in my thoughts.)

 

     I see everything in you, I see my whole life intertwined with yours.

  

     I fucking hate it.

 

     My skinny arms gripping a saxophone as you belted and crooned over that piano where the keys never stayed up. The F# never agreed with you, but you stuck a tiny bit of gum to keep it upright. (Why do I remember?) I could only admire the way your eyebrows scrunched together as you tried to keep it in place with a  _Fucking help me, Gra!!_ and  _Damon… you can’t say those kinds of words._ followed by an _I can say what I want!_ And I’d keep my voice hushed and low, nervous because the egg cartons stuck to the walls of the music room were peeling, and you’d never learnt how to keep your voice down.

 

     Such a theatre act, he projected his thoughts and refused to filter them anywhere and everywhere (and everybody could hear you). Tirades of how you were misunderstood and the repetition of “People hear but they don’t listen!” were things I'd hear all the time.

 

     I’d be listening, but he never thought much of it. Best friends are best friends.

 

     Hell was real. The Devil came politely, ringing the doorbell before leaving a wide-eyed blond on a doorstep across the figurative street from mine.

 

     I’d watch from my metaphorical window, watch the boy’s life pass by and I’d be so close to him but far out and up, up away. Dreaming but never believing that it could be something more because I’d feel so ashamed to think that of him. It was wrong… I was eleven and it felt wrong.

 

     Hell came to me in the form of a wide-eyed blond, flat, bowl hair that touted proper (ugh, verbatim) brocaded shoes.

     Hell insulted my shoes, but needed a saxophone solo for his song.

     Hell became my best friend, and it was possible that I liked him more than I should have.

 

     Best friend butterflies (that’s a thing now, I coined it. Mine.) that kept trying to fly out of me but I’d keep it in. They’d flutter unforgivingly as I’d have to hide the jitters and shivers every time he’d pass. I pushed them all down because…

 

     Because I just had to be confusing my feelings. I just  ~~loved~~  liked him so much because I’d never had a friend as dear as him, as familiar as him, or as homely as him.

 

     As safe as him.

 

 

––––––––––––––––––––––

 

 

     We grew older, closer. (Not as close in the way that I’d hoped, but it’s my fault for keeping my mouth shut, isn’t it?) I tried, one day. I really did, despite the attempt being pathetic.

 

      Your shoes kicked at the pavement, hoping for God knows what, because we both knew neither of us could dig through cement. My walk was jaunty, legs that would cross over the other with each step because you’d dared me to “tightrope walk”, but all we had were cracks on the pavement so we had to compromise. My arms were outstretched, biceps aching but the way your voice dropped to smooth lows or kept so level throughout anything, the delivery of a calm cool in spite of  _you,_ that I could ignore the ache and keep walking.

 

     Loud scuffing to my right, then a thud. I crane, and you’re there, lanky legs splayed across the ground with your slightly crooked teeth on show. You were rubbing your head, groaning slightly but I... I couldn’t stop staring at your sneakers. The diamond ridges were gone and were nearly flat (perhaps why you had fallen… wait why do I remember the original pattern of your soles?) and I made a mental note to buy you new shoes. Fuck, but it sank deeper, delving into zones of pure  _blegh_  (for lack of a better word) like obnoxiously window shopping, pissing off patrons as we guffaw over ridiculous mannequins or entering stores and leaving without having bought anything, or going to the cinema and sharing popcorn with some unspoken promise there, and I could watch the blue light sharpen your nose, your cheekbones and make your eyes even more blue than before. My head made you look so ethereal, splinters crackling across my mindscape of you in vivid detail, backgrounds fading out and dulling while you shone brighter than everything else and I had to stop. For the umpteenth time in my life, I felt so sorry for myself. I wanted too much,  _too_  much. I wanted so much, to the most juvenile like just holding your hand or petting your hair.

 

     I felt so hopeless, but I also felt your breath on my neck.

     “Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Same nonchalance, same cool that made my whole being turn to jelly.

 

      _I promised to keep you away, to distance my feelings from you, but my ‘he’s have turned into ‘you’s and I’m sorry._

I gulp, ice creeping over my temples as the warmth in my cheeks fought them away. I stared hard at the floor, hoping somehow the roots gripping my ankles would wither away and die so I could get out and away from him.

 

      _Start simple, Graham. He’s your best friend. He won’t think much of it. Just try it. If it’s destined to be, he’d be happy to answer._

“Do you, maybe, wanna go see a movie?”  _Platonically?_  I almost add, like an idiot. He smirks a bit, and brushes the hair out of his eyes. “Nah, recent cinema’s been pretty shit.”

 

     For a second, I’m transported back to the music room. He can say what he wants, he can say what he wants, he can say what he wants.

 

     But I really felt like I had been shot. I hated myself at that very moment. I wanted to argue, to let the indignance rise from my lungs and out at him and somehow turn it into  _“Recent cinema isn’t all rubbish!”_ but I couldn’t lie to you and to myself like that. My heart was trying to crawl out of my body, feline arteries trying to find somewhere quiet to die.

 

     And he faded from my vision as I was pulled down into…

      _Please say something else. I want the rest of my life to be spent together with you just let me have this. I don’t know why it hurts so much. Please help me, Damon, talk to me and say something else because I’d laid my heart out in that question and you didn’t know. You didn’t know and it’s my fault that I feel hopeless. Say the words that I can’t._

I couldn’t justify my despondence, pain overtaking me because I’d swum, swum so far deep into this ocean, my ship in a bottle except my ship was like a canoe and I’d never bothered to get back up on it. The cold tempest washing over my head and blurring my vision. My mental image used to be so at peace, the image of you and I, or at least that’s what it used to be. The heat left us (what I wish was us) as quickly as it came, the salty breeze now in lieu the press of your chest that bled warmth into me.

 

      _He just didn’t want to go to the damn cinema, stop being dramatic._

     You didn’t say anything of course, just cocked your head to the side then kept walking.

 

      _I forgive you._

 

     My lungs felt destroyed, but I kept walking too, just a little bit more out of breath.

 

     I still pray for a good ending, one that would make me happy. I miss the days when I’d look at you and feel warmth bloom in my chest. I don’t want my joy to be swallowed by my resentment and shame towards my feelings (that are very wrong). It isn’t right for me to  ~~love~~  like you this way. I can’t look at you anymore without my heart aching and my head spinning because I’m so deep in this denial, and I can never tell you how I feel.

    

     Never. This love isn’t safe, and it hurts me. I can’t communicate it to you because it’d hurt far more than having to see you off without me.

 

     I need help.

 

     I need you-

 

     to know how I feel about you.

**Author's Note:**

> One continuous stream of thought. I tried to read through my scrawl, but I don't want to go back and edit it because I'm tired.


End file.
